Nico looked down at her and grinned, putting an arm around her waist. ‘I knew you’d like it. Best view in London, I reckon.’
‘It’s amazing.’
‘That’s the Lloyd’s building,’ he said, stretching an arm in front of her and pointing at the horizon. ‘There’s St. Paul’s Cathedral, and that’s the BT Tower.’
‘That’s where they do Children in Need, isn’t it?’
‘Think so.’
It definitely was. Children in Need was an annual event in her family home, and they’d all sit in front of the TV watching the telethon for hours on end. She’d recognise the BT Tower anywhere. Below them, London looked like a living, breathing thing. Car lights meandered through the streets like blood flowing through veins and the ever present hum of traffic sounded like inhalations and exhalations. Above them, the clouds were streaked in a dazzling spectrum of orange and rose. It was Golden Hour, a magical time around sunrise and sunset when the light was at its softest - the perfect time for outdoor photography.
Laurel hunched her shoulders up towards her ears against the fierce autumnal wind as Nico stepped away from her and leaned forward, peering over the edge of the building.
‘I brought you up here because everyone else is going to use cups and glasses and stuff. You should do something different.’
Her eyes widened as he turned his back to the wall, laid his palms flat against its surface and hoisted himself up to sit on it.
‘Whoa, what are you doing?’
‘It’s alright, don’t worry.’ He grinned. ‘Look, no hands.’
He held his hands up, waving them like a performer close to his head and her heart leapt to her throat.
‘Nico, don’t.’
He laughed and put his hands back on the wall. ‘You should see your face.’
‘It’s not funny.’ She scowled. ‘Please get down.’
‘Why? It’s perfectly safe. Look, I’ll prove it.’
‘I don’t want you to prove anything, just get down.’
‘I’ve got the balance of a ninja. I could even stand on it, no problem.’
‘Don’t be stupid. We’re thirteen floors up.’ Her stomach lurched at the very idea of it. ‘Can you please get down?’
‘Not yet, we’ve got work to do first.’ He nodded towards the camera hanging around her neck.
She touched a hand to it and looked at him uneasily.
‘Hear me out,’ he said, lifting his legs and stretching them out in front of him. ‘You’ve got to have a photo where you focus on something close to you, and then something far away, right?’
‘Yes, but –’
‘Well, what if you focused on my feet?’
She stared back at him with confusion spread across her face. What about it? What did his feet have to do with being up here on the roof?
She sighed, shaking her head. ‘Nic, please get down. I can’t think while you’re up there.’
‘Come on, think about it.’ He swung his legs towards the wall and back again. ‘If my legs were stretched out and you focused on my toes then the background would be…’
‘It would be blurred and I’d have my shallow depth of field shot,’ Laurel finished, following his train of thought. ‘I get it.’
He took his hands from the wall and clapped them together, making her heart leap. ‘Bingo.’
‘We could have done this downstairs,’ she replied, with more than a little irritation in her voice. ‘We didn’t have to come up here for you to make your point, or scare me half to death.’
‘Sometimes being scared is good. It can give you a new perspective. And this’ll be so much better than using cups.’
She shook her head. She was furious that he’d done this on purpose, but also strongly aware that he was right. It would make a better photograph. She’d been so caught up in the technical side of this project that she’d been prepared to take an acceptable but ultimately boring picture.
Laurel looked at him sitting on the wall, blatantly pleased with himself. ‘You’re not going to come down, are you?’
‘Not until you take that photograph.’ He grinned.
‘Fine,’ she conceded with a heavy sigh and unscrewed the cap from her lens. ‘Just promise not to let go of the wall again.’
He might not be bothered about the height they were at, but she was. Actually, it wasn’t the height that was the problem. It was the worries about falling that made her stomach wobble with nerves on his behalf. She knelt on the ground in front of him. The concrete was cold beneath her jeans and the tiny stones on its surface dug into her knee as she quickly adjusted the camera settings.
‘Come on then, I want to get this over with,’ she said before squinting through the viewfinder.
He stretched his legs towards her and she focused on the tips of his toes as he pointed them in his shoes. The click of the shutter opening and closing usually gave her a quick rush of anticipation but this time, she barely registered it. Why did he have to be so extreme? Nico didn’t do things by halves and his motivation and ambition were becoming more and more demanding.
Over the last couple of weeks, he’d interrupted her whenever he’d had a new idea or found something interesting, regardless of what she’d been doing at the time. He’d even shrugged her awake in the middle of the night to tell her about his idea of attaching a minicab office to his car business. He’d had hundreds of business cards printed up the very next day, until realising how much hassle it would all take to set up. The idea had fallen flat on its face, never to be heard of again.
Laurel took a couple more shots before taking the camera away from her face. ‘Okay, done. Can you get down now?’
‘You’re going to thank me for this.’ He grinned.
‘Maybe,’ she grudgingly replied, pushing her fringe away from her eyes. ‘Come on, let’s go back downstairs, it’s getting cold.’
Laurel brushed the grit away from her knee as she stood up before rubbing her arms as if to make her point. Her light sweater did nothing against the wind buffeting around them and she craved the warmth of the flat.
‘You know, if you want to be a top-class photographer, you’re going to have to get used to stuff like this.’
She sighed again. ‘Can you please get down.’
‘Come on, don’t be boring.’
There it was, the insult she’d known would be applied to her sooner or later. She rubbed her eyes, suddenly tired of trying to satisfy him and be entertaining enough not to have the “boring” label applied to her. Why did he get to decide what was exciting and what wasn’t? If choosing not to sit on top of a tall building and being in danger of falling was being boring to him, then so be it.
‘Where’s your sense of adventure?’ he teased.
‘Downstairs on the sofa, which is exactly where I’m going.’
Nico looked unimpressed with her decision but she didn’t care, and she cared even less that technically, she still had to take another photograph for her depth of field project to be completed. Laurel turned on her heel and walked back across the roof to the stairwell. She half expected to hear his footsteps behind her, but when she quickly glanced back, he was still sitting there, looking quite happy to stay. She pulled the door open and let it slam shut behind her.
Maybe it was tiredness or frustration but, for the first time since they’d got together, she didn’t care what his reaction might be. Nico had given her the path to a new life and rescued her from dreariness, but she wasn’t the thrill seeker he was. She liked having a routine and being organised, and planning things through. And she didn’t need to feel “boring” because of it. The idea of them being not being as compatible a couple as she’d imagined they would was one that had been creeping up on her for a while. But then the thought that they might not be able to handle each other enough to stay together forever came into her mind and she quickly pushed it away.
Laurel hurried down the stairs, her feet tapping lightly on the concrete as she went, eager to get back to
the safety of the flat.
SEPH
Sixteen
‘What’s going on?’ Ben stopped in the bedroom doorway and looked at Seph.
It had only been a few hours since she’d left her mum’s in a rage, but it felt like an eternity. She had no idea how she’d managed to keep it all together. Waiting at the train station had been like torture. She’d been convinced she was falling into a swirling pit of despair. It had been the same at Bicester Village only, this time, it was worse. She’d barely been able to catch her breath and her heart had raced so fast she’d been terrified that it would run out of the energy it needed to continue beating. How she hadn’t passed out was a complete mystery.
Ben slung his bag on the floor. ‘I thought you’d quit?’
‘I have,’ she mumbled, despite the cigarette burning between her fingertips.
‘Which is why you’re surrounded by a nuclear fallout of smoke?’
He walked over to the sash windows and pulled them up, allowing a stream of clean air to blow in from outside. It licked against Seph’s skin and she could almost see it flowing in, cutting through the smoke like a hot knife slicing through a block of butter. She crushed the cigarette out onto a saucer in front of her.
‘I needed something to calm myself down.’
‘Why?’ Ben eyed her warily. ‘What’s happened?’
‘I had a fight with Mum.’
‘Another one?’
Seph nodded.
‘About Nico?’
‘She lied. Again.’ Seph chewed on the inside of her lip and bounced her knee up and down, sending vibrations across the bed. ‘They’ve been in touch for months. He’s been trying to meet me for ages but she told him to stay away. Can you believe that?’ She shook her head.
Ben opened another window and sat in the armchair, draped with clothes that were too dirty for the wardrobe but too clean for the laundry.
‘She said she didn’t think he’d been serious about it, because of his bipolar.’ Seph laughed aloud bitterly. ‘As if that’s any excuse.’
She looked at Ben, waiting for a reply. A flash of irritation hit her. She could tell by his eyes and the way his mouth was turned down a little at the sides that he was tired. She knew he’d had a long day and that all they ever seemed to talk about lately were her parental problems. But would it kill him to at least try to look interested? Seph took a breath and bounced her knee on the bed to fight the urge to say so.
‘I mean, how could she have kept meeting him to herself? And lie about it?’ She clenched her jaw. ‘She said she kept it to herself because she didn’t want to stress me out. As if I’m some kind of flake who can’t handle anything.’
Seph looked at Ben again. Was she talking to herself, or what?
‘Ben?’
He looked at her as if he’d been jolted from a daydream or microsleep and shook his head a little. ‘I don’t know what to say, Seph. She must’ve had her reasons. Maybe she really was just trying to protect you.’
‘Why does wanting to protect me make it alright?’ Seph pulled a face and shook her head. ‘You just don’t get it.’
Ben sighed and rubbed his hands over his face. ‘You’re right. Look, I’m sorry but I’m shattered. I’ve got a banging headache and I just don’t think I’ve got capacity to do this tonight. Let’s talk about it tomorrow.’
The first thing Seph had wanted to do when she’d left her mum’s was talk it through with Ben. She’d wanted to sit with someone who was on her side, someone she’d expected to understand, to share her anger or at least empathise with it. But instead, he was sitting there acting like none of this mattered, like it was all just an irritation that didn’t concern him.
Ben sighed as she reached for another cigarette. ‘Come on, Seph. Please? You quit those things for a reason.’
She lit the tip, ignoring him along with the voice in her head that agreed with him. She had quit for a reason - many, actually. She hadn’t wanted bad breath or smelly hair or yellow-stained fingers. Or worse, to die in pain from cancer like George had. Ben had quit months ago and even though she’d straggled behind, she’d been determined.
He shook his head. ‘I don’t understand how someone who claims to be so terrified of cancer starts smoking again after finally managing to give up.’
‘Well it might help if the man I was trying to talk to wasn’t looking back at me as if he’d rather be watching paint dry.’
‘Seph, I’ve just walked in the door after a thirteen-hour shoot. I’m sorry if I’m not performing up to standard over here, but I’m exhausted.’
‘Well maybe you wouldn’t be so exhausted if you hadn’t gone out drinking with Clara afterwards. So excuse me if I have a cigarette or two.’
‘Or ten, or twelve?’ Ben looked at the saucer full of butts with disgust. ‘Why don’t you just sink a bottle of wine too, while you’re at it?’
She sucked on her cigarette and rolled her eyes. ‘Whatever.’
He leaned forward in the chair, shaking his head. ‘Seph, when we met, you only ever drank at the weekends. You ate properly, you exercised.’ His voice had changed. The hard edge to it had softened. Ben sighed. ‘I know you haven’t got it easy right now, okay. I know you’re stressed out and there’s a lot going on, but-’
‘But what?’ she snapped, kicking back against his strange, placatory tone.
‘I love you, Seph, but there’s no other way to say this. You look like hell. And this,’ he said, pointing to the cigarette, ‘is not going to help.’
She stared at him with her mouth actually hanging open a little. Had he really just told her that she looked ‘like hell’?
‘Wow, thanks. That was real nice, Ben.’ She stubbed the cigarette out so hard that it snapped in two. ‘I tell you what, you might as well go and piss off back to where you just came from. It’d do us all a favour.’
Anger engulfed her and she sprang up from the bed, unable to stay so close to him. She couldn’t promise herself she wouldn’t lash out at him if she did.
‘What the hell does that mean?’ he asked.
Seph ignored him as she went straight to the bathroom. She slammed the door behind her and locked it shut before leaning against it, her throat aching and her eyes burning. She stared at the bathroom, willing herself to calm down. It normally helped. The room was clean and ordered with everything in its place - toothbrushes in the glass, towels hanging on the rail, perfumes and aftershaves lined up neatly on the shelf. It didn’t matter if the rest of the place was in chaos, as long as the bathroom was clean and orderly. The bathroom had always been a place to feel safe in, a place to calm down. After George died, she’d spent entire nights locked in her old one, huddled against the bath. This time though, it wasn’t making her feel calm or safe. All she could see were cold taps and clinical tiles, and a mirror that did nothing to help and everything to back up what Ben had said.
She didn’t look good. It wasn’t exactly news but was it so surprising? She’d been working flat out, literally pouring her soul out onto canvas for hours and days on end. She’d just had another huge fallout with her mum, not to mention the small detail of her biological dad being someone other than the man she’d always thought it was. So she hadn’t been that bothered about her appearance too much lately. So her personal hygiene had got a little sloppy. It was true that, until she’d met Nico two days ago, she couldn’t even remember properly washing her face, let alone putting any make-up on it. But still, so what? How dare Ben say something like that?
‘Seph?’ He knocked on the door.
She ignored him, staring into the mirror, becoming more and more disgusted by her reflection. She’d thought it was all in her head, that she’d been imagining the way he’d looked at her lately. How he seemed to be repulsed by her. It wasn’t the first time in their relationship that her sex drive had outpaced his but that was normal, you couldn’t expect to be in balance all the time. But it wasn’t normal to repeatedly turn down sex, or to look at her as if she were some
thing he wouldn’t touch with a long jumper’s pole.
‘Seph, will you come out of the bathroom?’ Ben called through the door.
‘Why? So you can tell me I look like shit again?’
‘You know I didn’t mean it like that and I’m not going to continue having a conversation with a door. You’re being ridiculous.’
She yanked the door open and glared at him. ‘Why don’t you just piss off with Clara and be done with it?’
She stalked past him with tiny wings of triumph fluttering somewhere deep inside. Despite what he’d always said about him and Clara being old news, she’d always known different.
‘Oh, for God’s sake. Not this again.’
Seph spun round to face him. ‘I’m not stupid, Ben. You think I don’t see the way she looks at you and how you’re oh so friendly with her? You’re turning down sex with me and now you’re going to Cannes with her.’
‘So?’ He threw his hands up. ‘It’s work.’
‘It’s always work.’
‘You’re adding two and two together and coming up with ten.’ He shook his head.
‘I’ve always known something was off with you two and what do you know, it turns out I was right.’
‘Why? Because I’ve got to work with her? What would you have me do?’ He folded his arms. ‘Not go?’
She clenched her jaws and mirrored him, folding hers too. ‘Yes.’
‘Are you seriously telling me that I should turn down a job that’ll pay the next two months’ rent and then some, because you’re jealous of Clara?’
Seph bit down on her lip, her heart pumping overtime with adrenaline. Self-doubt began to claw at the back of her mind. She knew she should walk away. She needed to get a grip, to breathe for a second and figure out how they’d even ended up here. She needed to tell herself what she had at Passing Clouds - that there was absolutely no reason whatsoever to be insecure about Clara. And she knew that if she didn’t stop talking, right now, she might say something she couldn’t take back. But knowing and doing were two very different things and at that moment in time, they felt totally incompatible.
What Goes Down: An emotional must-read of love, loss and second chances Page 17